William Roberts (1895-1980)

Aliases: William Ara; William (1895) Roberts; William P. Roberts; William Patrick Roberts

Professions: Figure painter; Painter; Portrait painter

WILLIAM ROBERTS, R.A.
WILLIAM ROBERTS, R.A.
WILLIAM ROBERTS, R.A.
William P. Roberts 1895 - 1980 Figures in the

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William Roberts Sold at Auction

William Roberts Biography

(b London, 5 June 1895; d London, 20 Jan 1980). English painter. He was apprenticed to the advertising firm of Sir Joseph Causton Ltd with the intention of becoming a poster designer (1909), but he attended evening classes at St Martin’s School of Art in London, and won a London County Council scholarship in drawing to the Slade School of Art in 1910. Roberts never lost the impeccable clarity of design that his early poster-designing experience seems to have instilled in him. He thrived at the Slade, executing a tempera wall painting under Professor Tonks’s supervision for a Fulham Girls’ Club (1911) and winning a Slade scholarship (1912). Like his close friend David Bomberg, he was fascinated by the achievements of Post-Impressionism and Cubism, an interest fortified in 1913 when he left the Slade and travelled in France and Italy. Such paintings from this period as The Return of Ulysses (1913–14; Nottingham, Castle Mus.) show his determination to simplify his figures and to adopt an aerial viewpoint that reduced the entire picture to a flat, angular pattern.

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